


Brian Kinney And The Law Of Diminishing Returns

by bjfic_archivist



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-30
Updated: 2003-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-27 14:26:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12082947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjfic_archivist/pseuds/bjfic_archivist
Summary: You wake up to look in the mirror and say, "I'm Brian Fucking Kinney," and you're fifty years old, and you want to die but you don't.





	Brian Kinney And The Law Of Diminishing Returns

**Author's Note:**

> Note from IrishCaelan, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Brian_Justin_Fanfiction_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in September 2017. I posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/bjfic/profile).

You wake up to look in the mirror and say, "I'm Brian Fucking Kinney," and you're fifty years old, and you want to die but you don't.

You splash soft, filtered water on your face and rub in the crème you've been using since twenty. They say it's new, they say it's improved, but it still feels like the same shit and you still got wrinkles.

Twenty was a good year, because you were fucking, and clubbing, and climbing, and you were yet unaware that good is just _good_ and anything involving "just" can be better. The best hit at thirty, you coasted at forty, and with fifty goes momentum. 

You think you can feel the slope tilting downhill.

 

You think eggs _would_ be at the bottom, wouldn't they, and you crack four while cursing. The shower pitter patters in the room behind you, and you burn things. You make an okay toast. Not so delicious omelets. 

You can never get it just right, always a tad runny. A little on the crispy side. Not nearly the job that Debbie did, and that's infuriating and comforting at the same time.

 

You make your breakfast and his, and he's not a trick, he's Justin, but he doesn't quite know it. He's still oddly young and not young, still stubbornly foolish, and he'll never be certain that if you had a choice, you'd want him here.

Choices aren't _out_ , not exactly, but they've dwindled.

You go to the gym, and you drink plenty of water, and it's too little too late, and no one with a sleek young ass will let you fuck him.

You might have been a good looking fifty, a _young_ looking fifty, if it weren't for the poppers, and pot, and whisky, and rum, and general lack of any and all sleep for thirty odd years.

 

You kiss him goodbye and he's thinking that maybe today you'll say that you love him. You won't, and it's not because you couldn't say the words and mean them, and own them, and live them for whole years that are vague situational facts and unremembered blurs. 

That hope is the only hold you have left, and you love him like cock, and your son, and the first four seconds of summer three ams, but you don't trust him. You don't think you _should_. You don't think you have to.

Maybe on your deathbed, but that feels like this morning and you're three blocks past Mason.

You're fifty. It's the end of the world.

 

"That's what you said at _forty_ ," says a small white and black card slid under your office door and signed _The Grieving Widow_.

 

You never married him, though you could, you could of, and he knows better than to ask. 

And you hate that he's not mistaken, you hate that he sees the best and worst of you, and you hate yourself for caring. You tried to hate him once, for perhaps four hours, and then you were smoking, road tripping, and fucking with your own head.

You use _his_ credit cards now, more often than not, because of habit and Rage, beloved far and wide by angry gay boys and young breeder girls. Rage, the echo that won't quit, and you have dreams that he's chasing you, and you're running, you're _running,_ and you never tell a single soul.

It's kind of like your line, the old one: you keep a few secrets.

 

You never tell that you've fucked Michael once, and it was really good sex, and you still can't believe you were that stupid. 

They assume that you fought too much or forgot too much.  Found an entirely other way to make him less special.  Managed, for once, to keep your hands off your dick.

 

You managed to find a new loft, a new job, and a staff that knows better than to buy you a birthday cake.   
They don't sing a cute song, and no one pops their head in, so you get two proposals done and a meeting out of the way.

You'll make partner in three years, after running backwards and backwards and finally miles in place, and no one asks because they don't want to know, but it's been fucking _worth_ it.

After always doing it completely and utterly wrong, you've finally, _finally_ gotten a hold on this no regrets, no apologies thing.

 

You think that on the last day of the world you should make reservations for the most expensive fiddler boys and their symphony, and fuck Justin's brains out, cramped in the bathroom. 

You can picture his skewed tie and wet panting mouth, the damp head of his dick pushing up under your shirt and hard against your stomach.

You can hear his nails scrambling and shrieking at the thin metal door.  You can see arch of his neck, how it sweats.  You can feel the dry bunch of his hair between your fingers.  You can taste pride in your throat, and you chew at it and spit.

 

You make a few calls, and you're just in luck, and you think you should be over it, ages and ages over it, and you're not, and that's another fact you'll never pass on to another living being.

You'll say you were feeling like some semi-public fucking and it was the only option on such short notice.

It just might be.

The fact that most of them barely remember will help them believe you.  You won't believe you, but that's what the end of existence is for.

 

No thought to spare for the little things.

 

You make it out of the office at six, and it's not your dream car.  It gets lousy gas mileage, and it's gorgeous, but it's no mid-life crisis.  There's a point when everything starts looking desperate, and you didn't get out in time, and you're paying for it, and you won't be purchasing another Corvette.

You can't pinpoint the date, but there was a sometime when you started being careful.  Not painfully, embarrassingly careful, but. Preventative measures.

 

You pass skyscrapers and remember your son, his unfocused eyes and the enormous very real weight of him.  You've never felt older, not even now, and you never meant to love him.   

You tell so many lies, but that's never been one of them.

 

You stop for a latte and a thick, flaky scone, and it's too late for both, and you shouldn't.  Of course, you shouldn't have contemplated obscenely expensive heroin on the lid of a dingy, jizz-stained toilet, and that happened, and you're still here. Sort of.

 

You're stopped at Dixon by what should be, of all accounts, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, except they're not, they're _teenagers_ , in their daddy bought cars, and that's undoubtedly worse.

 

"That's what you said at _thirty_ ," Justin says, after the universe doesn't unravel and you've made your way home, and you're telling the day's story with the filthiest wording you can muster. 

And you turn to him and see skyscrapers, spread out across flickering black. You remember a time and remember a roof and remember the pretty fucking decent life you used to have.

You remember maybe saying it -- possibly -- and maybe smiling and maybe admitting with a shrug, "They don't turn out too bad."

And you remember that Justin had snorted, and whispered that he could see right through you, mouth pressed up against your neck.


End file.
